


Rue

by LadyoftheShield



Series: Filling in the Blanks [3]
Category: Redwall Series - Brian Jacques
Genre: Adjusting, Angst, Broken Bones, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyoftheShield/pseuds/LadyoftheShield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fall comes, and they wait for Martin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rue

**Author's Note:**

> Request by Laflenkenway on tumblr, who asked for Keyla/Tullgrew fluff. Two slots left.

The old, knotted willows crowned the hill like broken teeth. Around them, the yellow boughs swayed gently in the wind.

A stone flew out into the air, narrowly missing a pigeon in flight.

“That one cut it a bit too close.”

“Eh, it’d be nice to have something to eat that isn’t drowning in honey for once.”

Tullgrew nodded sagely. Her splinted arm pressed against her side as her other paw idly twirled a loaded sling. “Can’t argue with that,” she said, and let the stone fly.

Missing the crow by a good three inches, the stone plopped into the idling river. Tullgrew groaned, and Keyla, for once, did not laugh. “Guess we’ll be coming out here a lot more often,” he said.

“Not like there’s anything else to do,” she agreed as she clumsily fit another stone to the sling.

Another rock narrowly missed the pigeon, who squawked with mild indignation. “Feels good to have a sling in my paws again,” Keyla said.

“They’re that strict about weapons?” she asked, surprised.

"Well ‘weapons,” yes, but they allow axes, kitchen knives- things like that. You can kill a beast with those, can’t you?”

“Sounds like the spirit of the thing,” she suggested "you can only use weapons to hurt others, but at least an axe has another use."

"I figured,” he said. "’s why I wear it as a belt, most of the time. None of them have noticed.” He reconsidered. “Well, they just don’t know what it is. They think it’s some backward slave fashion statement.”

Another stone flew out, striking the knot of a tree on the opposite bank.

“…and if they catch you?”

He shrugged. “What are they gonna do? Kick me out? Make me do manual labor? Lock me up? There’s not much they can do.” He twisted the strong cloth between his palms. “‘Sides, they’d actually have to know what a sling looks like.”

“Brome does.”

“He hasn’t said anything, and I don’t think he’s going to snitch.” Out of stones, Keyla sat down on the soft grass flecked with rue and leaned against Tullgrew’s good side, careful not to jostle her healing ribs. During her long stint in the infirmary, some of her muscles had atrophied away, but she was still more muscular than he would ever be. Not that he would ever admit that out loud to her. “War changed him.”

The unsaid ‘Felldoh changed him’ hung in the air.

“We could stay the night here,” he suggested after a long silence, “it’s quiet. Peaceful.”

Her eyes flicked over to his slim frame. “You mean you want to wait for Martin.”

“Don’t you?” he asked, looking up.

“…well, yes, but-”

He sat up. “But what?”

Snap.

The rock from her sling flew through the air, lost momentum, and dropped into the water with an anticlimactic plip.

“Seems like if he was going to come back, he would’ve already.”

“No. That can’t be right. Rowanoak and- whats his face, Grumm?- They’re with him, right? Rowanoak’s mates are waitin’ here an’ she knows it- Grumm lives here, for season’s sake.”

She held up a paw. “Alright, alright, I get it.”

“Sorry.” He leaned back against her. Lost in thought, his elbow jostled her side, and her lips twitched at the spark of pain that ran through it. At least it was less than usual. It was definitely healing. “Just- seasons, Tullgrew-”

“What?”

His mouth pressed together. Her ribs twinged again as her insides plaited together. “Nothin’.”

She flicked a pebble at him, hiding her unease with a light laugh. “Come on, Keyla, you’re not in the habit of keeping secrets.” Not from us, she added silently.

His shoulders slumped, slightly. More of his weight piled onto her. “...You didn’t see him, Tullgrew,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Not after the battle.”

There was only one that mattered.

“No,” she returned, “I didn’t.”

“His eyes were open, it was just like- nobeast was there. Like he was-“ his throat worked, the words catching in it like a spider catches a hapless fly, and his paw went up to his ear in unthinking agitation.

“Don’t,” she snapped, compensating for the lack of an available paw by elbowing him sharply in the side. He yelped, and his paw jerked away from his scabbed ear.

“Sorry.”

“...He’ll come back, Keyla,” she said, gently nudging his shoulder, “you know he won’t leave Barkjon. Or you.”

His tense shoulders relaxed, and his eyes closed briefly. Her own question burned in her throat.

“I made the right choice,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

“What do you mean?” she asked, knowing full well what he meant, but needing to hear it anyway.

His paw entwined with hers. “Martin wasn’t going to die. You could have.”

“But I didn’t.”

“We didn’t know that,” he said. “We’ve seen Martin empty before, when his grandma died. You-” he paused. "No one thought you would last the night."

“…would you do it differently? If you could?”

He thought of Barkjon, sobbing into his chest as the weight of potentially losing another child crushed the old squirrel, of her weak attempts at conversation that slowly shifted into frustration at being bedridden as cognition returned. Of having no one here his age who understood why he couldn’t just relax, why he had to be doing something useful every moment or else, why the constantly sweetened food had grown bitter in his mouth and the inability to defend himself grated on his nerves.

He thought of her lying in the ground next to Felldoh.

"No."


End file.
